


all the streets rearranged

by amorekay



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 00:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17355650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay/pseuds/amorekay
Summary: “Good news,” Heero says, and the delivery is so deadpan Duo almost misses Heero Yuy attempt a joke. “They don’t want soldiers anymore.”(Duo tries to find his place after the war. Or erase his mark, if he can't. He goes looking for the person who knows best how to disappear.)





	all the streets rearranged

**Author's Note:**

> Written to a repeating tracklist of Kaleo's Way Down We Go and Arcade Fire's Suburban War, mostly.

The corridor is narrow and lit only by the flickering of a bulb about to go out, his shadow twisting on the wall, throwing the hunch of his shoulders into something distorted. His boots echo against the hard floor. He stifles a sneeze and keeps walking —it’s quiet, otherwise.

The room number, 51, is at the end of the row. He double checks the inside of his wrist where he’d inked down the place in a rush earlier. Definitely the right number. He knocks.

Heero in the doorway looks more familiar than he’d expected. He thought he’d look different, really, like he’d put on a new skin with his new life like he had so many times in the past, blend in like another anonymous worker in another anonymous block. But he looks more like he did when they were working together during the war, more hollowed around the eyes, more like he couldn’t remember quite who he was but hadn’t yet stepped into some other boy’s shoes to fill the gap

“Long time no see,” Duo says, cheerfully.

 

Heero thinks there’s a mission, because of course Heero thinks there’s a mission. He doesn’t offer Duo a place to sit, so Duo takes it upon himself and flops down on the couch, tucking his feet up onto the box in front of it. It’s then that he notices the cat. “Huh,” he says.

“What,” Heero says, in the process of inputting the lock codes on the door.

“Somehow, when I pictured you out here doing —hell if I know— I didn’t picture you coming home to your cat.”

“She’s not mine,” he says. “She must stay in the building, and sometimes she follows me up here.”

Duo eyes the cat, sooty grey with yellow eyes sharp on him from the stack of boxes in the corner. The room is spare, beat-up couch and an array of boxes serving as most of the furniture. There isn’t much sign of living, at all. It could easily look like someone’s storage unit. He wonders if it _is_ someone’s storage unit.

“So, are you living here or hiding out?”

“What do you want?”

Duo holds his hands up, total innocence, and says, “I can’t come around to see an old friend who disappeared one day and hasn’t been heard from since, can I?”

“Trowa knew where I was.”

“Yeah, and a great job he did sharing that with the rest of us. I mean, I know we aren’t best buddies, but you’d think everything that happened would bond us in some way.”

Heero goes quiet for a moment. His fingers twitch, once, briefly, at his side and Duo wonders if he was going for a fist or a holster. He wonders what the new veneer of peace has done for the infamous Heero Yuy.

“There is something,” he says, and Heero’s gaze sharpens on him. Duo scratches the side of his nose, his tone light. He thinks about the way it’s felt like a clock is ticking down, every moment since he stopped fighting, wonders how much longer he can sidestep fate until Death arrives at his doorstep again. “I was wondering how you disappear.”

 

“Did you hear they want to do a bit about the Gundam pilots? Make us into a documentary or something, except they’re having trouble because half the shit is classified and the other half is propaganda created by both sides and hell to wade through. ESUN doesn’t seem too fond of the idea. I mean, what can you do—either villainize us and risk pissing off the colonies again or glorify us and risk going against the ideal of peace by praising a bunch of kids blowing shit up.”

Heero nods, noncommittal. His eyes are distant, flickering back and forth like he’s reading screens inside his own head. The cat blinks, slow and sleepy, and Duo blinks back at her. She starts to groom, and he glances back at Heero, and shrugs. “I never really thought about this.” He laughs, the sound more brittle than he intended. “I thought I’d be long dead by this point. Maybe I should be.”

“Trowa drove with me to find the relatives of Marshal Noventa during the war. I put a gun in their hands and told them to enact vengeance for my mistake and their pain.” It’s more information about himself than Heero’s ever offered to him before, Duo thinks, as Heero stares back at him. “Sylvia Noventa called me a coward and said I was taking the easy way out.”

He doesn’t move, everything in his posture stiff with military precision. “Even then, I didn’t want to kill anyone else. I was tired. I am tired. This was my other option.”

“Yeah,” Duo says. He leans back and closes his eyes, breaking the intensity of Heero’s gaze. “And we’re so damn unkillable, anyway. I’m never the one to die. Guess I should consider myself lucky.”

There’s the quiet shuffle of footsteps, and Heero repeats, from further away. “This was _my_ only option.” The emphasis in his words catches Duo’s attention.

When he opens his eyes, Heero’s inputting the unlock code at the door. He looks back at Duo with the same intensity as before. “I don’t have any advice for you. I don’t know how to be anything other than this, and only I can figure out what to do with what I can be. Heero Yuy shouldn’t exist.”

Duo laughs. “But the God of Death should?”

Heero frowns. “Was Duo Maxwell your codename for the mission?”

“No,” Duo says, sharp, half-surprised himself by how raw the flare of indignant, defensive anger still is. No. It’s his name, he chose it, for them. It’s _his_.

A nod. “Then make a life for Duo Maxwell.”

The door code beeps as it unlocks, and Heero opens the door, clearly done with the conversation. Duo throws his hands in the air and mutters, half to himself, “Still as antisocial as ever, honestly, what kind of cryptic help was that, and it’s not like ‘Duo Maxwell’ isn’t gonna attract attention these days, it’s—.”

“Duo,” Heero says. “The only way to live a good life is to act on your emotions. A soldier doesn’t run.”

“Too bad I never was much good at being a proper soldier.”

“Good news,” Heero says, and the delivery is so deadpan Duo almost misses Heero Yuy attempt a joke. “They don’t want soldiers anymore.”

 

Duo leaves before he wears out his welcome, taking the same steps down the same narrow corridor in this nondescript building, leaving behind—not a soldier, not a killer, maybe not anyone yet. _I don’t know how to be anything other than this_ , Heero had said. _They don’t want soldiers anymore_.

He thinks about Hilde, making plans for the junkyard like she expects Duo to stick around and help run it for a while, about the scrappers and sellers who know him by sight and razz him like one of their own. He thinks about Quatre’s last hastily sent message, the last line about—we’re like a family here, everyone is working hard to get the colony on its feet.

He thinks about that looming shadow of Death, ticking down every moment he dares plant his feet in one spot for too long. Who is he, arrogant enough to think it won’t come knocking at his door again?

A couple of kids rush past him on the backstreet, one of them bumping into him in their hurry and the other throwing a guarded look back his way that only slightly relaxes when he flashes them a smile. He doesn’t bother checking his pockets —his important things are safe tucked in his boots, and if they managed to lift a little cash off him, more power to them.

However, he thinks with a wince, suddenly reminded: he was going to bum a place to sleep off of Heero, and kind of forgot about it in the whole stoic-advice-doling conversation and exit that ensued. It isn’t the first time that Heero’ll be less than impressed to see him again, probably, but hey—in his book, Heero still owes him.

Duo turns on his heel.

 

Heero is less than impressed to see him again.


End file.
